The Thunder played Thursday night in Houston, and they had to play their back-to-back Friday without All-Star point guard Russell Westbook.

But they still had a full complement of that one dude.

Kevin Durant was way more than the Warriors could handle as their history of losing in Oklahoma City continued with a 127-121 defeat in front of a national TV audience and the 134th consecutive sellout crowd at Chesapeake Energy Arena.

Durant had a career-high 54 points, which also represented an NBA season high - passing the 48 he scored against both Minnesota and Utah this month. He scored nine points during a stretch of 2:37 in the third quarter and added 11 points during an 87-second span in the fourth.

"He's one of the best players in the league, up there with LeBron," Warriors centerAndrew Bogut said. "He shoots the ball very, very well, and at his height, there really isn't much you can do about it. If you put a bigger guy on him, then he's too quick. We battled him for the most part, but he got hot and showed why he's a perennial All-Star, a future Hall of Famer and possibly an MVP this year."

Durant added six assists, four rebounds, two steals and a blocked shot and did his scoring damage on just 28 field-goal attempts. He missed only 11 shots (nine from the floor, two from the foul line), while the Warriors missed 15 of their 34 free-throw attempts.

But the Warriors' problem wasn't scoring. Stephen Curry had 37 points and 11 assists for his league-leading fifth game with at least 30 points and 10 assists, and Klay Thompson added 26 points on 6-of-9 three-point shooting.

The problem was defense. After allowing Denver to shoot 54.2 percent from the field in Wednesday's loss, a season high by a Warriors' opponent, Oklahoma City (30-10) knocked down 58 percent.

The Thunder have split their past 10 games and gone just 9-6 without Westbrook (right knee), but their 127 points were the most scored this season by a Warriors' opponent. Golden State dropped consecutive games for the first time since Dec. 13 and 15 and fell to 1-10 all time in Oklahoma City.

"We're a good enough defensive team to give a little bit more effort and to fight a little bit harder," Warriors head coach Mark Jackson said. Durant is "a special talent, who is a superstar basketball player and an all-time great. He made shots, but at the end of the day, 121 points for us should be good enough to win a ballgame. That's the disappointing thing about it."

The Warriors have never won a season series against Oklahoma City since the franchise relocated from Seattle in 2008, and they never really gave themselves much of a chance of taking this season's set 2-1.

The teams didn't play a lot of defense during a high-octane first quarter. Curry and Thompson combined for 24 points on 6-of-8 three-point shooting, but Durant gave Oklahoma City a 39-32 lead by scoring 15 points while missing only one of his first eight shots.

Durant made eight straight field-goal attempts during one stretch spanning the first and second quarters. After the Warriors took their lone lead in the second quarter, Durant scored seven points during Oklahoma City's 14-5 run that put the Thunder ahead 69-61.

He scored 15 points in both the first and fourth quarters and scored double digits in each of the four quarters to help the Thunder build a 121-104 lead with 4:53 remaining in the game.

"When you let a guy like K.D. start off a game as hot as he did, he's going to find a way to continue that," Curry said. "It's hard to try to turn it off and get stops against a dynamic scorer like that."

Saturday's game

Who: Warriors (25-16) at Pelicans (15-23)

Where: New Orleans

When: 5 p.m.

TV/Radio: CSNBA/680

Of note: The Warriors swept last season's series with New Orleans for the first time since 1995-96 and have a franchise-best, six-game winning streak in the series. ... Stephen Curry led the team in rebounds and assists in November's win over the Pelicans, and he was tops in points and assists in December's victory. ... New Orleans, which is on a seven-game skid, will be without point guard Jrue Holiday (right tibia stress fracture) and power forward Ryan Anderson (herniated disc). Guard Tyreke Evans has missed the past three games and is day to day with a sprained left ankle.